Author
Topic: A Challenge to Christians (Read 63093 times)

I still go to church with my wife, however I find myself going less and less. I still find myself talking to God, or maybe it is just talking to myself. I am finding it hard to completely let go. I guess all things take time. Somehow it makes me feel more alone. I guess it is going to take some getting use to. My wife still gives that 10%.lol

Logged

Most people think they know what they know. The problem starts by not knowing what you don't know. You know? (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence) (Albert Einstein)One fool can ask more questions in a minute than twelve wise men can answer in an hour. --Nikolai Lenin

I still go to church with my wife, however I find myself going less and less. I still find myself talking to God, or maybe it is just talking to myself. I am finding it hard to completely let go. I guess all things take time. Somehow it makes me feel more alone. I guess it is going to take some getting use to. My wife still gives that 10%.lol

Riley, It took me 5 years (of much depression and anguish) to completely let go of the God concept and embrace reality as it is. But I can assure you, that it is incredibly freeing and beautiful. You discover that life (every moment) is infinitely valuable and precious. Every relationship, every experience, and every waking breath becomes "alive" and meaningful. No more petitioning of the empty sky. No more focusing on a non-existent "heaven" while putting down this life as "a speck", and certainly no more "sinning then repenting" while feeling guilty. Responsibility is all ours! We are free to enjoy this magnificent existence and all of the fruit it has to offer.

My appreciation for life increased 1000+% when I gave up the irrational arguments for God and embraced life as it is - as wonderful, beautiful, glorious, and magnificent as we make it.

Why would you seek help from an atheist? First of all, it appalls me that these people would attempt to pull you away from your faith. Just because they don't have any faith doesn't mean they have to try to drag you away form God. Secondly, they cannot be trusted. Polls show that people don't trust atheists.

"Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust

Please do not trust these people. They argue in ignorance, admittedly they have no evidence or proof to back up what they believe. And for that matter they cannot even figure out what they believe. Being a Christian is simple. You believe in the Risen Christ. You do not have to have all the answers like the atheists want to make you believe that you do. Remember, they don't have any answers.

Why would you seek help from an atheist? First of all, it appalls me that these people would attempt to pull you away from your faith. Just because they don't have any faith doesn't mean they have to try to drag you away form God. Secondly, they cannot be trusted.

What did Jesus say about judging people?

Likewise, I'm pretty sure he said something about showering them with love...

Quote

Polls show that people don't trust atheists.

"Atheists are one of the most disliked groups in America. Only 45 percent of Americans say they would vote for a qualified atheist presidential candidate, and atheists are rated as the least desirable group for a potential son-in-law or daughter-in-law to belong to. Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia recently published a set of studies looking at why atheists are so disliked. His conclusion: It comes down to trust." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-atheists-we-distrust

Appeal to majority. How other treats you has nothing to do with if you're trustworthy or not.

Quote

Please do not trust these people. They argue in ignorance, admittedly they have no evidence or proof to back up what they believe. And for that matter they cannot even figure out what they believe.

Again, Jesus said not to be judgemental.

Quote

Being a Christian is simple. You believe in the Risen Christ. You do not have to have all the answers like the atheists want to make you believe that you do. Remember, they don't have any answers.

Again. Judgemental. Atheists do not say they "have all the answers". It's only theists that makes that claim.

This is one of the things I have against atheists. The hypocrisy; I am "judging" and you can say whatever you want.I give polls and published studies/articles to back up my claims, you can't back up anything- all you do is ask ignorant questions like; "why doesn't God heal amputees?"

Polls show that atheists cannot be trusted is not the same thing as atheist can't be trusted! Indeed lumping people into a group and assuming they are all the same is just plain bad. It is like me saying that, for example, 'all Catholics priests are kiddy-fiddlers' Of course that isn't true and its the same with atheists. Just because someone doesn't believe in the right god does not mean they cannot be trusted. Would you have trusted George Washington for example (clue he was a deist).

If atheists don't support your favoured god, HB, why not show the evidence that he is alive today and active in the world. That would be much more use that telling atheists you don't trust them. I suspect you are more concerned that looked at in the cold light of day, religious faith does not stand up.

Logged

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such that its falshood would be more miraculous than the facts it endeavours to establish. (David Hume)

Well, I am brand new to this forum. I am still working on my 3 initial responses so I can post my profile. But I did happen to notice that someone has written, "Jesus said don't be judgmental." This is a case of a text without a context being a pretext. Jesus never said that we are not to be judgmental. The context of His statement--i.e., "judge not lest you be judged"--is that we will be judged by the same standard by which we judge others. Basically, we are not to "judge" unless we are willing to be "judged." (I will reserve a discussion of the meaning of the word judge for a future post.) I am saddened, during my first few moments of active membership on this forum, to see someone attempt to shut someone else down by using a reference out of context.

HB, If atheists don't support your favoured god, HB, why not show the evidence that he is alive today and active in the world. That would be much more use that telling atheists you don't trust them. I suspect you are more concerned that looked at in the cold light of day, religious faith does not stand up.

Again hypocrisy. Wheels is asking me to show evidence that Jesus is alive today, yet makes the claim "religious faith doers not stand up." Why are you asking me to show evidence, when you fail to? Do you see the hypocrisy?Besides, my original message was intended for a brother that you are ignorantly attempting to turn away from God.

Again hypocrisy. Wheels is asking me to show evidence that Jesus is alive today, yet makes the claim "religious faith doers not stand up." Why are you asking me to show evidence, when you fail to? Do you see the hypocrisy?Besides, my original message was intended for a brother that you are ignorantly attempting to turn away from God.

You have this whole 'hypocrisy' schtick going on right now, holybuckets, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's just a convenient way to try yet again to get the goat of various atheists on this forum. Seems to me that you're more interested in trying to provoke a reaction from atheists than anything. And considering that you've consistently failed to provide the slightest shred of real evidence for your beliefs, you certainly have no room to talk about hypocrisy.

By the way, religious faith doesn't stand up to scientific examination any more than psychic powers do. Let's take prayer, for example. To the best of my knowledge, every time prayer has been investigated to see if it has a noticeable effect on the real world, it never does. It's always either subjective effects inside a person's mind, or else it ends up being "regression to the mean" (such as when people pray for someone to be healed), or something that's statistically insignificant and thus better attributed to random chance.

The usual excuse to justify this lack of results is something like "God works in mysterious ways". The problem with this excuse is that if prayers were being answered at all, it would make a statistical difference - injured people who were prayed for would be noticeably more likely to recover, for example, or people caught in a disaster who prayed for deliverance would be more likely to survive than those who didn't.

But it's never been shown to happen. And that leads to the conclusion that prayer doesn't actually do anything (except for subjective effects, which could easily come from within the person's own mind). And since prayer is probably the cornerstone of religious faith, it is reasonable to conclude that it wouldn't stand up to scrutiny either.

Logged

Nullus In Verba, aka "Take nobody's word for it!" If you can't show it, then you don't know it.

This is where you and your other friends who argue in ignorance are wrong.First is your continuous distortion of what is posted. The problem is not providing real evidence, the problem is you continue to play your own god and discount them.My original post was to ask Riley2112 not to listen or trust you people. Your post helps prove my point.Second, JesseWSellers post proves my point as well. I do not know if Sellers is a Christian or atheist, but he did point out Aaron's false post in defining "judging".I again plead for Jesse not to listen to these "false prophets" ... they have no idea what they are talking about.

This is one of the things I have against atheists. The hypocrisy; I am "judging" and you can say whatever you want.I give polls and published studies/articles to back up my claims, you can't back up anything- all you do is ask ignorant questions like; "why doesn't God heal amputees?"

You made the statement that atheists are untrustworthy, that they are "ignorant", and that they want you to "think they have all the answers".

Those are all judgemental, unfair, and untrue statements. You're trying to tell someone else how atheists act and think, but you don't know how they do think and act. Many atheists are honest people, most of us are not "ignorant" about god or christainly, or whatever you meant by "argue in ignorance". No atheists proclaims to "have all the answers". That is why I brought up the Jesus quote. The plank is very much firmly embedded in your eye.

This is where you and your other friends who argue in ignorance are wrong.

Which you've also consistently failed to prove.

Quote from: holybuckets

First is your continuous distortion of what is posted. The problem is not providing real evidence, the problem is you continue to play your own god and discount them.

This is a lie, holybuckets. I have not "played god", nor has any other poster to my knowledge. The reason I keep discounting your evidence is because it comes solely from the Bible and is thus not reliable proof for the central claims of Christianity. Your unwillingness to accept this does not make it false.

Quote from: holybuckets

My original post was to ask Riley2112 not to listen or trust you people. Your post helps prove my point.

Actually, I would invite riley2112 to read your other threads and our responses and judge for himself whether we're worth listening to. Seems to me that if you're right, then him reading other posts I and others have made will strengthen your point. But that doesn't seem to be what you want. Instead, you seem to want him to stop reading what we write, to not listen to what we say, and so on. Indeed, you pointed to a poll that claimed that people didn't trust atheists as part of your argument, which proves nothing at all. Polls are nothing more than the subjective opinions of people, many of whom may not have sufficient information on the subject at hand to draw a reasoned conclusion.

Quote from: holybuckets

Second, JesseWSellers post proves my point as well. I do not know if Sellers is a Christian or atheist, but he did point out Aaron's false post in defining "judging".

Actually, Aaron123 has a point. The "judge not lest ye be judged" statement in the Bible is something that can be taken several ways - as can most of the Bible - and Aaron took it the simplest way, as an injunction against judging others.

Quote from: holybuckets

I again plead for Jesse not to listen to these "false prophets" ... they have no idea what they are talking about.

Seems to me that you're having more than a little trouble knowing what you're talking about. The dangerous part is that you think you do.

JesseWSellers: These are the kinds of topics that holybuckets has been making for the past several weeks on this forum (in reverse order, because I'm doing a post history search):

May 23, Gay-related immune deficiency, in which he started with the premise that homosexuals caused the spread of AIDS. In reply #31, he claimed (no joke, sadly) that "many atheists are homosexual - all are in denial", tried to pin responsibility for aids on gay people, and claimed that atheists had no moral code and had created a 'god' to fit around their own lifestyle.

May 17, Don't expect an atheist president anytime soon, where he employed a similar tactic to the one he used here (using a poll to infer his own conclusions about atheists, rather than pointing to actual facts). His actual reason for making it was because he wanted to show that the atheist argument was hypocritical because they kept using arguments from the Bible to critique Christian belief. According to reply 8, his whole point for making the topic was to "play the game" - if atheists could do it, so could he. His arguments got quite a bit worse from there; I'll highlight one of the ones from reply 231, near the end of the thread (when he abandoned his own thread because he was losing the argument) to illustrate this.

Quote

This is why I call atheists hypocrites. Tell me (and be honest) if I am wrong.I post: There is a GodYou will post: show me your proof

I will say because of JesusYou will post: that proves nothing.

I will say: He claimed to be GodYou will say: Where is your proof

I will say: It says so in the BibleYou will laugh and say: That means nothing

I will say: But He has eye witnessesYou will say: Prove it

Then I will post: OK prove that it is wrongYou will post: "the problem in this thread is your approach has been:jesus resurrected because the bible! Prove I'm wrong!!"

I critiqued this post of his a short time later and demonstrated, using his own words, that he was basing claims on claims, and when pressed for evidence, pointed to 'eyewitness'[1] reports of the resurrection in the Bible. So instead of finding more reliable evidence to prove himself right, he basically went on the offensive and demanded that we prove him wrong - and that's where his 'hypocrite' argument comes from, because we pointed out that there's no point in trying to prove a claim wrong until it had been proven right.

May 17, Why do atheists refer to the Laws of Moses, or the Torah Law, to prove Ch(ristianity wrong?) - note, his topic was too long and got cut off by the forum software, but that's what I believe the rest of the title was. One particular thing that caught my eye was that one poster said that Christianity was invented long after Jesus's death, and holybuckets took this as a claim and asked him to provide evidence. Another poster asked him to clarify when he (holybuckets) thought Christianity started, and he never did actually answer it - it was always "this guy has to support his own claim".

May 12, Holocaust, where holybuckets asked what proof there was that the Holocaust even happened, and pointed to books written by General Eisenhower, Prime Minister Churchill, and General de Gaulle which did not mention Nazi gas chambers (or other evidence of the Holocaust) as evidence that it didn't happen. It got worse later on. Needless to say, many people, myself included, took offense at that, and found him lots of evidence to show that it had happened.

By now, it's starting to become very clear that holybuckets is not interested in actually discussing these topics. Instead, he's playing 'gotcha!', pouncing on any statement by anyone which he can construe as a claim, and then demanding 'evidence' for it. All so he can 'prove' his statement that atheists are hypocrites. It's more than a little tiresome to keep reading the same kinds of posts, with the same arguments, no matter how many times we criticize and refute them.

HB, If atheists don't support your favoured god, HB, why not show the evidence that he is alive today and active in the world. That would be much more use that telling atheists you don't trust them. I suspect you are more concerned that looked at in the cold light of day, religious faith does not stand up.

Again hypocrisy. Wheels is asking me to show evidence that Jesus is alive today, yet makes the claim "religious faith doers not stand up." Why are you asking me to show evidence, when you fail to? Do you see the hypocrisy?Besides, my original message was intended for a brother that you are ignorantly attempting to turn away from God.

Buckets, 1. Please read what this word "[wiki]hypocrisy[/wiki]" actually means. It does not apply to what I posted.

2. Ever since you came on this board it seems to have been your avowed intent to avoid ever having to back up your own claims. Every time you are asked for evidence in support of your beliefs you have some lame excuse why you can't actually do it. Usually you blame someone else but it is getting down to you having to justify yourself.

I have asked you in various posts to show us what evidence there is for your religion aside from the bible. You claim that Jesus in alive, presumably today. How do you know this - have you spoken to him and got a reply? Now, let's have some real answers instead of avoiding the matter in hand. I'm sure I am not the only one who is tired of your antics.

Logged

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such that its falshood would be more miraculous than the facts it endeavours to establish. (David Hume)

I am starting to think that holybuckets is an Alicebot made out of banality.

Logged

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."

So you quoted a statement with which you agree, and called it the definition of ignorance...?

Please allow me to put the post in context for you, since you obviously failed to read before you spoke. Which, by the way, is a sign of ignorance. The posted criticized me for not being able to prove my religious faith with scientific evidence. I responded that this was ignorant, since one cannot prove religious faith with scientific evidence.

That's not what you actually said. It makes sense, but it's not what you actually said.

You should pay more attention to what you actually say. Because when you don't, what you actually say may end up sounding really, really stupid. This is one such case.

First of all, I see the little games you play. Admit it (which you won't) that conceptually you cannot dispute this. You know you cannot dispute this, so you have to throw a pipe bomb in the conversation to hopefully throw it off course.

Let me post this again, so you will understand the context.

How can "faith" stand up to "scientific" investigation? Can you explain this one to me please?Faith is something that cannot be proven scientifically. Hence the word faith.

"Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, deity, or in the doctrines or teachings of a religion. It is also belief that is not based on proof.[1]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith

Yet you atheists demand "scientific" proof. Can you see how ignorant your argument is?

Once again Azdgari, "religious faith doesn't stand up to scientific examination". The person who posted this thought that he/she was being so smart as to come up with this brilliant claim. No duh!

Why didn't you just say, 'yes, that's correct, I have no proof' then? It's not ignorant to restate a fact you both agree on.

Do you truly believe that religious faith is a respectable reason to believe in any version of a God or gods?

I have to be honest, I first started to type a real scathing post to this response, but I think I will deal with you, on this one, gently.

First, so we both agree that religious faith cannot be examined scientifically even though you keep insisting.Second, you ask if religious faith is a respectable reason to believe in God? Jeff, faith is the reason you believe or do not believe in God. You cannot see God. God is not a tangible object that dangles on your rear view mirror. So, in terms of it being a "respectable" reason, it is the "only" reason. If you don't believe in God, then don't believe in God. It is as simple as that. But to ask someone to show scientific evidence for an intangible and philosophical object is asinine. I can see it now, everyone is going to ask the same pseudo-intellectual questions, so go ahead. But my answer will always be the same. You cannot prove/disprove religious faith using a scientific examination.